Facilitating rich discourse to engage students and develop confidence

Through education, teachers influence change in their students' mindsets, which in turn can help students become successful individuals (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). We believe that the best teachers guide, motivate,...

Students build and print objects while developing proportional reasoning and technology skills

Each year we explore new and innovative ways to teach middle grades students the foundational concepts and skills they need for algebra such as proportional reasoning. This year, we engaged students in a scale...

Using the power of words to explore math content, careers, and self-reflection

Reading and writing are powerful learning tools that can be used effectively in the math classroom to draw connections between mathematics and its application to the other school disciplines and the real world....

Using children's literature to explore "rich" representations and purposeful tools in mathematics

"Everything seems cheap—when was this book made?" asked one student as we embarked on an activity to engage students in a meaningful exploration focused on mathematical modeling and connections using the...

How STEM pedagogy is adaptable and accessible in any classroom

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is the current teaching practice being implemented in classrooms to develop 21st century skills and engage students in a deeper level of learning by presenting authentic, complex problems...

Examining the Evidence
For centuries, traditional American schooling has taken place in isolated silos of math, language arts, science, and social studies. However, once entering the workforce, students find that the...

Three things middle level educators can do to encourage more girls to engage in STEM

The movie Hidden Figures, the story of four African American women working at NASA in the 1960s, has reinvigorated the role of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers. Although women comprise...

Inspire student interest and positive attitudes toward math

Four hundred years ago Galileo Galilei observed that "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the Universe." The "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics," in the words of famous physicist Eugene...